Tag Archives: Topic: Hate Crimes

Washington Blade: The Nevada Assembly on Tuesday gave final approval to a bill that would add gender identity and expression to the state’s hate crimes law.

Andrew Harrod of Front Page Magazine via The Legal Project: A Bruges, Belgium criminal court convicted a man for shredding a Koran on March 6, 2013. The court imposed a four-month prison sentence and a 600 euro fine upon him. He now additionally faces a revocation of a previous suspension of an 18-month prison sentence for having set a fire in a wood. This case highlights yet again the greater restrictions on speech in free societies outside of the United States and how these restrictions can limit open debate about Islam.

ABC (AP): Polish prosecutors say they will not charge former President Lech Walesa with hate crimes for recent remarks deemed offensive to gays.

Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians in Europe: Upon the request of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians submitted 67 individually documented hate crimes and hate incidents on March 1st.

Boston Globe: The last two of 16 Amish found guilty in beard- and hair-cutting attacks on fellow Amish in Ohio have appealed their convictions.

WorldNetDaily: Authorities in New Jersey allege a Muslim man beheaded two Coptic Christians, burying their bodies and heads and hands in separate graves near Philadelphia, bringing the horror of the persecution of Christians in Islamic nations to the United States.

WUSA9.com: District of Columbia officials are announcing a partnership between prosecutors, the mayor’s office and the gay, lesbian and transgender community.

9News.com: Police are investigating a mysterious case in Evergreen where paint stripper was thrown on cars parked in a church parking lot.

Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians in Europe: The nativity scene at the Church of Barby in Savoy was set on fire on Tuesday, December 18th, between 7 and 8 in the evening.

Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians in Europe: On December 23, three churches were set on fire in the small town of Amstetten, lower Austria. One of the churches was severely damaged.

Alliance Defending Freedom Legal Counsel Paul Coleman has authored an important new book, released this week, about the criminalization of so-called “hate speech” in Europe and the widespread threat it poses to free speech everywhere.

Religion Clause Blog: The FBI today released its 2011 Hate Crime Statistics. The report shows that there were 6,216 single-bias motivated incidents reported, of which 1,233 (19.8%) involved religious bias.

Click Orlando: Baby Jesus and a wooden donkey were stolen from the nativity scene of a Central Florida city, prompting officials to offer a cash reward for their return.

The Republic (AP): Police in Portland say a maximum $1,000 reward has been offered for information leading to an arrest in the case of Italian marble religious statues damaged at a Catholic shrine and botanical garden.

LifeSiteNews: Vandals in Toronto attacked and damaged the nativity scene placed in front of Toronto’s Old City Hall courthouse by Gethsemane Ministries, a Catholic lay movement.

KPHO.com: Deputies said someone stole various holiday decorations from several Spartanburg yards, including part of a nativity scene.

WTNH.com: Police in Torrington are searching for a baby Jesus statue that was stolen from a nativity scene in Christmas Village.

Intolerance Against Christians: November 2012: A gothic chapel, a protected heritage monument which had just been renovated, was vandalised by graffiti in Haßfurt.

Boston Globe: Police are investigating after someone spray-painted swastikas on a Stockton Springs church, and the pastor says the church was targeted because of his opposition to same-sex marriage.

Kentucky.com: The testimony provided more evidence that the eastern parts of our commonwealth are suffering. Perhaps more important than any other ailment that affects the rough underside of the “holler shack” or the “sagging modular home” are the dysfunctional families who live in them.

Ken Klukowski at Breitbart: Floyd Corkins, the volunteer at a gay-rights organization who attempted to commit mass murder at the Christian conservative Family Research Council (FRC) because of FRC’s stance on social and religious issues, has been indicted on charges of domestic terrorism. It is the first such indictment ever handed down by a grand jury in the nation’s capital.

The Church Report: Virginia man accused of shooting a security guard inside the headquarters of a conservative Christian lobbying group was indicted on a local terrorism charge, marking the first time in a decade that a person has been prosecuted under the statute, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Reuters: A federal jury on Thursday convicted an Ohio Amish sect leader and 15 of his followers on federal hate crimes charges in connection with several beard- and hair-cutting attacks on Amish people that shocked the state last fall.

Religion Clause Blog: Yesterday the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights held hearings titled Hate Crimes and the Threat of Domestic Extremism.

Findlaw: It happened several weeks ago when Fraga woke up to find her Virgin Mary statue sitting headless in the front yard. A week after that a gnome was placed on the statue where the head used to be. Needlessly cruel mischief? Likely. But hate crime? The police don’t agree. Although there are no leads and no suspects, police don’t think it was a hate crime, reports NECN. They think it was vandalism rather than motivated by bigotry.

NY Daily News: A hate crime reported last month by a lesbian claiming three masked men tied her up in her Nebraska home, carved derogatory slurs into her skin and set fire to her house was allegedly an elaborate hoax, police said Tuesday….

CBS New York: Muslims who gathered for prayer to celebrate the end of Ramadan in a city park found bacon scattered on the ground, CBS 2’s John Slattery reported Monday.

Sun Times: Evergreen Park Cemetery is home to about 500 Muslim graves, and the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago said some of those graves were covered in graffiti.

Politico: Perkins told Fox News he believes certain people such as Corkins could be inspired by the “hate group” label bestowed by the SPLC. “It opens up for people who are not right, that are imbalanced, like Corkins who comes in and literally had the intent of killing people here yesterday,” he said. “And I’m not saying that the Southern Poverty Law Center is responsible for the shooting — Mr. Corkins is responsible for the shooting — they are responsible for creating an environment that led to yesterday’s shooting.”

LA Times: Actually, the Southern Poverty Law Center classifies the Family Research Council as a hate group not simply because it opposes same-sex marriage but because (according to the center) the conservative group defames gays by promoting junk science about homosexuality and asserting a link between gays and pedophilia. Second, even conservatives have defined down the meaning of the word “hate.”

Wall Street Journal: A security guard at the conservative Family Research Council here was shot Wednesday in an incident being probed as a possible case of domestic terrorism.

Legal Insurrection: It has just been confirmed that Family Research Council shooting suspect Floyd Corkins II had been volunteering at the DC Center for the LGBT Community for the past six months.

LifeNews: Pro-life activist Gary Boisclair is creating quite a stir in his primary bid against Muslim Democrat incumbent Congressman Keith Ellison in Minnesota’s 5th District, up to and including death threats.

Jordan Lorence at the Speak Up Movement University Blog: Universities cannot justify unconstitutional “speech codes” by pointing to crimes like the recent murder of six Sikhs in Wisconsin by a white supremacist who entered their temple during a worship service and opened fire. University policies that ban “offensive” speech target expression protected by the First Amendment, which is far different than laws punishing criminals who harm others because of their race, religion, etc.

Examiner.com: The Frederick News-Post reported Sunday that a Chick-Fil-A restaurant in Frederick, Maryland, was the target of vandals who glued gay marriage stickers and other items to the windows sometime Saturday night.

WPRI.com: Muslims from a North Smithfield mosque are asking for extra protection after a sign outside their place of worship was vandalized over the weekend.

C-FAM: In the span of one month, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights issued eleven press releases decrying episodes of violence against “gay,” “lesbian,” and “trans” persons across the American continent. The Inter-American Commission blames the countries where these attacks took place for failing to investigate and prosecute hate crimes and calls on them to provide special protections for persons on the basis of their sexual orientation and identity.

Telegraph: A mosque burned to the ground in Missouri on Monday, in what worshippers suspect was a hate attack, less than a day after six people were killed in a shooting at a Sikh temple.

How Appealing links to the ruling and offers this excerpt: According to today’s opinion, in challenging the law, the plaintiffs alleged that “the expression and practice of their anti-homosexual religious beliefs will lead to federal investigation and prosecution under the Act, in violation of their First Amendment rights.”

Religion Clause Blog: Defendants claim the attacks involved issues of internal church discipline and not anti-Amish bias.

AP: Chile’s president signed an anti-discrimination law Thursday following the killing of a gay man beaten by attackers who carved swastikas into his body.

Boston Globe: The Massachusetts Transgender Equal Rights Act bars discrimination in employment, housing, education, and lending. The law also enables prosecutors to bring hate crime charges in attacks that target someone for being transgender.

LifeSiteNews: Another pro-lifer was attacked last Tuesday, but this time at his home, with his wife and children terrorized in the middle of the night. Personhood USA Founder and President Keith Mason and his wife Jennifer have three young children from eight years old on down, and a fourth child due next month.

Christian Today: A Catholic church in Mangalore was Monday attacked by a group of unidentified people in a presumed attempt to trigger communal conflict.

Religion Clause Blog: In United States v. Mullet, (ND OH, May 31, 2012), an Ohio federal district court upheld the constitutionality of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act against commerce clause and First Amendment challenges.

Christian Institute: Former Director of Public Prosecutions Lord Macdonald QC has thrown his weight behind a campaign to amend Section 5 of the Public Order Act.

Hickory Daily Record: More than 2,000 protestors armed with signs and slogans lined Newton’s Southwest Boulevard on Sunday morning. They were there in reaction to the May 13 sermon by Charles Worley, pastor of Providence Road Baptist Church . . . Someone set a fire under an air conditioning unit at Providence Road Baptist Church Saturday night. The church was not seriously damaged and was able to hold services on Sunday morning.
“It got hot enough to melt the insulation,” said Catawba County Sheriff Coy Reid.

ABC: A lesbian couple who claimed they were victims of a hate crime have been arrested after police determined they staged the incidents.

J. Harrison Kinyanjui at Daily Nation: Fixated with Western aphorisms such as “democracy”, “human rights”, “tolerance”, and “openness”, an increasing number of African intellectuals under the aegis of “civil society” have gleefully joined a well-choreographed global campaign by Western governments to propagate homosexuality as part of the “human rights” rubric and population control agenda.

Benjamin Bull at American Thinker: Several days ago, I noted with interest that Danish journalist and historian Lars Hedegaard has been acquitted by a unanimous Dutch Supreme Court of charges that he violated Holland’s notorious “hate speech” laws. His crime? He made a public utterance that state prosecutors concluded was “denigrating” of Islam.

AP: The Roman Catholic Parish of Holy Cross is the home of Mission Santa Cruz founded in 1791. It’s the 12th link in the chain of 21 Franciscan missions . . .

LifeSiteNews: A homosexual activist group calling itself “Angry Queers” claimed responsibility for smashing nine windows in a church known for teaching traditional sexual morality early Tuesday morning.

Legal-Project.org: On April 13, 2012, Lars Hedegaard — a journalist, historian, and president of the Danish Free Press Society – takes the appeal of his conviction under Article 266(b) to the Danish Supreme Court. Readers may recall that back in January of 2011, Hedegaard was tried and acquitted for remarks he made during a 2009 interview concerning sexual abuse within Muslim communities.

LifeNews: The pro-life student group at Northern Kentucky University is a victim of pro-abortion activists vandalizing their display once again — after pro-abortion students and a professor were taken to court the first time.

AP: The U.N. human rights office is urging Chile to pass new laws against hate crimes and discrimination after the killing of a young gay man . . .

AP: The case has prompted a national debate in Chile over hate crimes . . .

Times Union: There was a verdict in the wrenching Rutgers webcam spying case, but no resolution to a broader question that hovered over it: To what extent are hate crime laws a help or a hindrance in the pursuit of justice? . . . “These laws serve only one purpose — they criminalize thoughts and beliefs that are not considered politically correct,” said Erik Stanley, senior legal counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund. “There’s a clash and a conflict — I don’t know that it’s here yet, but it’s coming — with freedom of expression and freedom of religion,” Stanley said.

Jeff Jacoby at Townhall: N A NEW JERSEY COURTROOM on Monday, the defense rested in the trial of Dharun Ravi, the former Rutgers freshman accused of using a webcam to spy on his roommate’s intimate encounter with an older man. The roommate, Tyler Clementi, later committed suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge, and his death unleashed a national outcry about teen-age bullying and antigay persecution.

AP: Twelve defendants charged in beard-cutting attacks on fellow Amish in Ohio are challenging the constitutionality of the federal hate crimes law.

Christian Institute: Openly gay popstar Will Young believes vicars who describe gay marriage as ‘abhorrent’ should be prosecuted for hate crimes.

Religion Clause Blog: As previously reported, last November federal prosecutors brought charges of conspiracy to violate the federal Hate Crimes statute against seven members of the Amish Bergholz clan who allegedly assaulted and cut the beards of 4 members of a different Amish community.

WAFF-TV (includes video): Gay rights advocates rallied around the state capital on Sunday hoping lawmakers will change the hate crime law in Alabama.

Turtle Bay and Beyond: In Sweden, critics of homosexuality risk being sent to jail. And the European Court of Human Rights, demonstrating once again its complete and utter failure to protect the fundamental rights enshrined in the European Rights Convention, finds that this constitutes no violation of the freedom of opinion.

The Volokh Conspiracy: The case is Vejdeland v. Sweden (Feb. 9, 2012) . . . In December 2004 the applicants [who are adults] … went to an upper secondary school (gymnasieskola) and distributed approximately a hundred leaflets by leaving them in or on the pupils’ lockers. The episode ended when the school’s principal intervened and made them leave the premises . . .

The Providence Journal: Crimes that stem from the victim’s gender identity would be considered hate crimes under legislation winning support in the Rhode Island General Assembly.

Independent.ie: Humanist says ‘godless culture’ sermon was hostile to those who do not share church’s aims . . .

AP: “Three men have been convicted of a hate crime in Britain for distributing brochures calling for the execution of gay people.”

TPMMuckraker: This suit is just one of many that argues that “religious liberty” is at stake as LGBT rights expand. And, along with the Alliance Defense Fund, the Thomas More Law Center dedicates itself to fighting against “a culture increasingly hostile to Christians and their faith.”

C-Fam Friday Fax: Tension between free speech advocacy and efforts to curb “hate speech” has arisen over the past year as the result of recent initiatives at the United Nations (UN) and by the Obama administration.

News from The Associated Press: A man accused of plotting to attack Tampa, Fla.-area nightclubs and a sheriff’s office with bombs and guns also railed against Christians, Jews and Western living in videos he posted online.

WWMT (AP): A three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati is taking up the claim of three Michigan ministers that a federal hate crime law infringes on their First Amendment rights and should be declared unconstitutional.

Daily Mail Online: Callous raiders have shown little regard for the sacrosanct; striking churches in a Lancashire town in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Smashing stained glass windows for entry, the thieves have attacked eight churches near Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire in the last few weeks.

TheEagle.com: The person who stole a baby Jesus figurine from a Nativity scene in Texas A&M’s All Faiths Chapel was probably playing a prank.

Toronoto.ctv.ca: A Toronto family that had pieces of its Christmas nativity scene stolen says they have received an outpouring of support and donation offers, but will rebuild the missing pieces themselves.

Boston Herald: Police in Fairhaven say whoever crashed their vehicle through a Nativity scene in a public space in town did it deliberately.